Veiling Women: Islamists' Most Powerful Weapon

The first victim of the Islamist war in Algeria was a girl who refused the veil, Katia Bengana, who defended her choice even as the executioners pointed a gun at her head. In 1994, Algiers literally awoke to walls plastered with posters announcing the execution of unveiled women.

In April 1947, Princess Lalla Aisha gave a speech in Tangiers and people listened astonished to that unveiled girl. In a few weeks, women throughout the country refused the scarf. Today Morocco is one of the freest countries in the Arab world.

In the mid-1980s, sharia law was implemented in many countries, women in the Middle East were placed in a portable prison and in Europe they resumed the veil to reclaim their "identity," which meant the refusal of assimilation to Western values and the Islamization of many European cities.

First veils were imposed on women, then Islamists began their jihad against the West.

Laurence Rossignol, France's Minister for the Family, Children and Women's Rights, sparked a furor about the Islamic veil proliferating in her country, when she compared headscarved women to "American negroes who accepted slavery." In addition, Elisabeth Badinter, one of France's most famous feminists, even called for boycotting Europe's fashion companies, such as Uniqlo and Dolce & Gabbana, which are developing Islamically correct clothes (in 2013, Muslims spent $266 billion dollars on clothing, and the figure could reach $484 billion by 2019).

A new trend is also emerging in Western popular culture, which was almost invisible in the media a decade ago: headscarved women are now also present in television programs such as MasterChef.

The mainstream culture now considers veiling women "normal." Air France recently called on its female employees to wear veils while in Iran. The government of Italy recently veiled nude sculptures at Rome's Capitoline Museum during a visit by Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, out of "respect" for his sensibilities.

In the Arab-Islamic world, however, for a long time covered women were the exception.

It is hard to believe that, until the early 1990s, the majority of women in Algeria were not veiled. On May 13, 1958 at Place du Gouvernement in Algiers, dozens of women tore off their veils. Miniskirts invaded the streets.

Iran's Revolution reversed this trend: the first scarf appeared at the beginning of the 1980s with the rise of the Islamic movements in Algeria's universities and poor neighborhoods. The hijab was distributed by the Iranian Embassy in Algiers.

In 1990, Algeria was on the edge of a long season of death and fear: a civil war, with the specter of Islamist breakthrough (100,000 dead). People knew that something terrible was going to happen by counting the number of veils in the streets.

The first victim of the Islamist war in Algeria was a girl who refused the veil, Katia Bengana. She defended her choice even as the executioners pointed a gun at her head. In 1994, Algiers literally awoke to walls plastered with Islamist posters announcing the execution of unveiled women. Today, very few women dare to leave their house without a hijab or chador.

Look at the photographs of Kabul in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and you will see many unveiled women. Then came the Taliban and covered them. The emancipation in Morocco was sparked by Princess Lalla Aisha, the daughter of Sultan Mohamed Ben Youssef, who took the title of king when the country proclaimed independence. In April 1947, Lalla gave a speech in Tangiers and people listened astonished to that unveiled girl. In a few weeks, women throughout the country refused the scarf. Today Morocco is one of the freest countries in the Arab world.

Look at the photographs of Kabul in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and you will see many unveiled women. Then came the Taliban and covered them.

In Egypt, back in the 1950s, President Gamal Abdel Nasser took to television to mock the Muslim Brotherhood's request to veil the women. His wife, Tahia, did not wear a scarf, even in official photographs. Today, according to the scholar Mona Abaza, 80% of Egyptian women are veiled. It was only in the 1990s that the strict Wahhabi version of Islam arrived in Egypt, through millions of Egyptians who went to work in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries. Meanwhile, Islamist political movements gained ground. Then Egyptian women began sporting the veil.

In Iran, the traditional black veil covering Iranian women from head to ankles, invaded the country under Ayatollah Khomeini. He asserted that the chador is the "banner of the revolution" and imposed it on all the women.

Fifty years earlier, in 1926, Reza Shah had provided police protection to women who had chosen to refuse the veil. On January 7, 1936, the Shah ordered all the teachers, the wives of ministers and government officials "to appear in European clothes." The Shah asked his wife and daughters to go unveiled in public. These and other Western reforms were supported by Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, who succeeded his father in September 1941, and instituted the ban on veiled women in public.

In Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk harangued female crowds, pushing them to set an example: taking off the veil meant hastening the necessary rapprochement between Turkey and Western civilization. For fifty years, Turkey refused the veil -- until 1997, when the government headed by the Islamist Necmettin Erbakan abolished the ban on the veil in public places.

Turkey's Erdogan used the veil to encourage the rampant Islamization of the society.

In contrast, Tunisia's President, Habib Bourguiba, issued a circular banning the wearing of hijab in schools and public offices. He called the veil "odious rag," and promoted his country as one of the most enlightened Arab nations.

It was not only the Muslim world that for a long time refused this symbol. Before the spread of radical Islam, the miniskirt, a symbol of Western culture, could also be seen all over the Middle East. There are many photographs to remind us of that long period: the unveiled stewardesses in skirts of the Afghan airline (what an irony that Air France today wants to veil them); the beauty contest that King Hussein of Jordan organized at Hotel Philadelphia; the Iraqi female football team; the Syrian female athlete Silvana Shaheen; the unveiled Libyan women marching in the streets; the female students at the Palestinian Birzeit University and the Egyptian girls on the beach (at that time, a burkini would have been rejected as a cage).

Then, in the mid-1980s, everything suddenly changed: Sharia law was implemented in many countries, women in the Middle East were placed in a portable prison, and in Europe they resumed the veil to reclaim their "identity," which meant the refusal of assimilation to Western values and the Islamization of many European cities.

First veils were imposed on women, then Islamists began their jihad against the West.

First we betrayed these women by accepting their slavery as a "liberation," then Air France started veiling women while in Iran as a form of "respect." It is also revealing of the hypocrisy of most of Western feminists, who are always ready to denounce the "homophobic" Christians and "sexism" in the U.S., but keep silent about the sexual crimes of radical Islam. In the words of the feminist Rebecca Brink Vipond, "I won't take the bait of a patronizing call for feminists to set aside their goals in America to address problems in Muslim theocracies." These are the same feminists who abandoned Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the brave Dutch-Somali dissident from Islam, to her own defenses even after she found refuge in the U.S.: they prevented her from speaking at Brandeis University.

For how long we will maintain our ban on female genital mutilation (FGM)? A study just published in the U.S. suggests that allowing some "milder" forms of female mutilation, which affect 200 million women in the world, is more "culturally sensitive" than a ban on the practice, and that a ritual "nick" of girls' vaginas could prevent a more radical disfiguring practice. The proposal didn't come from Tariq Ramadan or an Islamic court in Sudan, but from two American gynecologists, Kavita Shah Arora and Allan J. Jacobs, who published the study in one of the most important scientific journals, the Journal of Medical Ethics.

It is a testament to the depths that can be reached in what the French "new philosopher," Pascal Bruckner, called "the tears of White men" with their masochism, cowardice and cynical relativism. Why not also justify the Islamic stoning of women who are said to commit adultery? It is as if we cannot capitulate quickly enough.

Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

Comment on this item

22 Reader Comments

"government of Italy recently veiled nude sculptures at Rome's Capitoline Museum during a visit by Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, out of "respect" for his sensibilities."

This was done voluntarily, wasn't it? If so, then that is very different than forcing women to wear a hijab or chador. (Btw, there is no universal consensus in the West on nude art. I hate it personally, creepy people calling me a prude or a Puritan, etc, notwithstanding.).

At any rate, interesting article, although discouraging that so many places in the Islamic world seem to be going backwards. When we see women in Islamic dress, the question we should ask ourselves is not, as Dalia Mogahed's TED talk might suggest, "Is she brainwashed?" It should be, especially if the woman was raised in the West and did not grow up wearing a hijab, "What is her commitment to sharia law." The latter is a much more urgent question.

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Frederica • Apr 21, 2016 at 09:52

With all that has occurred in the Muslim world and now has spilled over to the Western world, we often find ourselves criticizing terrorism harshly the methods of Islam in the modern world but as the dust settles we remain mute. For a world ( Western ) that prides itself of entering and moving forward into the 21st century we seem to inadvertently or willingly accept 7th century ideology. That's one step forward two steps back.

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Talal Itani • Apr 21, 2016 at 07:38

Some Quran verses regarding dress code.

[Quran 74:4] And purify your clothes.

[Quran 7:31] O Children of Adam! Dress properly at every place of worship, and eat and drink, but do not be excessive. He does not love the excessive.

[Quran 24:30] Tell the believing men to restrain their looks, and to guard their privates. That is purer for them. God is cognizant of what they do.

[Quran 24:31] And tell the believing women to restrain their looks, and to guard their privates, and not display their beauty except what is apparent thereof, and to draw their coverings over their breasts, and not expose their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands' fathers, their sons, their husbands' sons, their brothers, their brothers' sons, their sisters' sons, their women, what their right hands possess, their male attendants who have no sexual desires, or children who are not yet aware of the nakedness of women. And they should not strike their feet to draw attention to their hidden beauty. And repent to God, all of you believers, so that you may succeed.

source: www.clearquran.com

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Mickey Oberman • Apr 20, 2016 at 18:47

"Veiling Women: Islamists' Most Powerful Weapon"

It appears that your headline is 100% correct.

Women are their own worst enemies.

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tiki • Apr 20, 2016 at 11:22

We didn't protest when they veiled the woman of the ME.....for it was about their religion!

We didn't protest when they veiled the Muslim women in the West.....for it was about their free choice & our tolerance!

We didn't protest when they veiled our freedom of speech.......for it was about their good taste & our fearful tolerance.

We won't protest when they veil our freedom.......for it will be to late!

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Ron Thompson • Apr 20, 2016 at 11:11

Mr Meotti's message, discussion, and argument are long overdue. Free Your Women are the three words which could bring the downfall of Islam as a religion and belief system worthy of respect. Every time I see a veiled woman, if it is worn voluntarily, I feel disrespect, because I know that sheis either ignorant or indifferent to the fact, the overwhelming fact, that hundreds of millions of her gender mates are not free to not wear this sartorial prison, this badge of inferiority.

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JEAN • Apr 20, 2016 at 10:51

Islamists want women to wear a veil and be completely covered as a symbol of their submission to men.

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ktchnsnk • Apr 20, 2016 at 10:47

"In the words of the feminist Rebecca Brink Vipond, 'I won't take the bait of a patronizing call for feminists to set aside their goals in America to address problems in Muslim theocracies.'"

What goals were asked to 'be set aside'?

Is it also beneath them to address the problem of Rape Jihad, as is now becoming prominent in Sweden, Germany and England?

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Ed in North Texas • Apr 20, 2016 at 10:34

As Giulio Meotti points out in his article, Veiling Women: Islamists' Most Powerful Weapon, the veil, hijab et al were disappearing in the Middle East until a resurgence in the 1980s. This return of the veil was accompanied by the start of the Islamic Jihad against the West. Islam will not allow Christian ideas to function once it is strong enough to prevail. Christians have no desire to employ their strength to push back on Islamic expansion in their bloodless invasion of the West.

Turkey from the '20s and the rise of Kemalism was on a fast track to nearly completely "Westernize" until the Iranian revolution reversed Iran's Shah imposed Westernization. Absent a successful revolution, I won't see a secular government in either country again in my remaining lifetime.

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Solomon Balas • Apr 20, 2016 at 09:39

The veil is much more than a piece of cloth to enhance modesty; it is a chain to shackle women, half of society, whilst men are then left with a free hand to get up to mischief.

Liberated women who reject the veil would not feel cut out of their society the world and of decisions made by their men in their family units.

This is womens' fight to throw off the chains of slavery.

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Newsel • Apr 20, 2016 at 09:25

The Hijab and women's rights. I worked in Iran pre 1979 and very few Iranian ladies, youth or otherwise, wore the hijab. This all changed after the so called "revolution" when Carter pulled the rug out from under the Shah and the fundamentalists started their war on women. The Shahanshah worked hard to emancipate the Iranian women in violation of what is written and it frightened the men to the point where they had to reinstate their control over the female. This they have done and continue to do so as they put a reported 7000 undercover "moral" police on the streets in Tehran.

Everything we have experienced in the form of terrorist attacks and what the thousands upon thousands of women have experienced as they undergo the torture of FGM, death by stoning, disfiguration by acid and knife attacks etc. etc. is directly related to that act of stupidity where we essentially turned our backs on women's rights in the ME and elsewhere and we continue to do so today by refusing to enforce women's rights in violation of national laws as we accommodate this barbaric behavior in violation of our own value system.

The Hijab is being used by the fundamentalist Imam's as a weapon to control and intimidate in their "home countries" and they also refuse to allow those living in the west to assimilate by enforcing the Hijab as a dress code.

In this manner, the fundamentalists continue with the Islamization of European cities which will lead, eventually, to the Islamization of the nation state itself. History repeats itself. As the pictures depict, go ask the Afghan's, the Egyptians etc. etc...

"First veils were imposed on women, then Islamists began their jihad against the West."

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Robert Davis Newsel • Apr 21, 2016 at 04:34

Every problem we have with Iran and Islam now can be blamed on President Carter and has continued with Obama. Leftwing ideology is what is killing the West and leading to WW3.

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robert davis • Apr 20, 2016 at 09:15

All of the West's submission problems to Islam are to be laid on the leftwing governments who accept to submit before even they are asked to. The real reason is that they all court Moslems to vote for them. Leftwing governments MUST GO by way of votes or by putsch if the West is to survive.

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Miroslava Jurcik • Apr 20, 2016 at 08:45

People really never heard enough answers to why we don't want covered women to walk in our streets.

This is a totally awesome read and nobody can argue any of it as it all based on facts.

Also I would add the murder of millions of Buddhists in Pakistan because they wouldn't comply !

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KD Punshon • Apr 20, 2016 at 08:44

I am old enough to remember a time when the covering of women didn't exist in "our" world. I remember a woman who came to visit my neighbour (her daughter) in Canada from Iran. She said that she could no longer go outside without covering her face and body. She hated it but could not leave Iran. She told me Iran wasn't always this way. She loved to come to Canada where she was free from this oppression. I couldn't understand then how something so terrible could happen. That was 1992. Now its everywhere. Muslim women defend this "right". Feminists defend this "right". Lloyds Bank has a Sharia Account and Marks and Spencers has a burkini. The future looks very bleak for women indeed.

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Jayell • Apr 20, 2016 at 08:18

Isn't it strange how people fall for the 'Emperor's new clothes' situation again and again, and will not challenge those who try to argue that black is white? Or perhaps, using 'modern' parlance, 'black is the NEW white'? Or some similar nonsense? For example, traditional (and reasonable) logic has always had it that 'in UNITY is strength'. Then along came the trendy liberal lefties who tried to push the line that (I quote) 'in DIVERSITY is strength', even though all logic and experience militates against such a ridiculous supposition. And there were no arguments against it - or perhaps they were stifled? Then we started getting the line, even from some modern 'progressive' or 'liberated' Western females, that wearing the burkha, or/and completely covering your face to the extent that you looked like some sort of ridiculous walking postbox, somehow 'liberated' you. I believe the justification for this assertion was that it removed the wearer from the controlling stare of the evil male of the species, and who (presumably) was consequently free to do exactly as she pleased. We are all convinced, aren't we? And how much more of this sort of rubbish are we supposed to tolerate?

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FatherJon • Apr 20, 2016 at 08:10

In the interests purely of accuracy, women in Afghanistan mostly wore that hideous blue head-to-toe garb well before the Taliban. It was only the more Westernised Afghan women who wore Western clothes.

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Jeff Page • Apr 20, 2016 at 08:00

That's the most important word in the last sentence 'Capitulate'. It's the easy way out for our western politicians. Rather than question the motives, they tend to find it much easier to roll over and pretend it's not happening! The article also mentioned the word 'Cowardice' which as we all know is exactly the unfortunate truth. When it comes to the veil, hijab or chador it is obvious that this is nothing to do with the religion but Muslim men attempting to keep total control over women by the use of threats of violence. And in some cases, the 'full Monty' Muslim garb can and has been used as an effective way of escaping western countries in disguise! It is also an effective way of ensuring that integration doesn't happen. Knowing all this, and seeing the Muslim enclaves around and within cities in their countries, the politicians still fail to understand the real intentions of Muslims. There is nothing at all in the Koran that demands women wear veils, as usual it is a man made law. It's almost like the scenario witnessed on a drunken Saturday night in any European country, whereby a boyfriend challenges another guy by shouting out, 'what you doing looking at my bird'. Pathetic!

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Fofi • Apr 20, 2016 at 07:53

What I can't bear is the moral high-handedness of the left leaning Westerners vis-a-vis this backward 'progression'?! How dare they present this as respect for women, liberation indeed !? Why would women forgo freedom and individual expression to all look like tents, shuffling three steps behind their menfolk.

This not only effaces their self but constrains and constricts their actions.

I so agree that this is all interconnected and once you let this strict Islamic behaviour to become the norm, well we all know what is next; female genital 'alteration' as acceptable, sharia as the legal system, call to prayer and minarets on every corner and yes you guessed it, victimisation of every other minority infidel!

Wakey wakey Europe. History should tell us what is next!Check out Submission by Michel Houellebecq

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Kris Kristian • Apr 20, 2016 at 07:50

Those women in Arab Islamic countries treated as sex slaves. There are so many beautiful women who have been given a life sentence of portable prison. The have no freedom at all.

Yet, at the UN, Israel, the ONLY country in the entire Middle East, is condemned by the UN Security council and Human rights council. Israel is the ONLY country where women have full freedom of movement, dress, and speech.

This should be an eye opener to the civilized countries which always condemn Israel, especially, when Israel defends itself against Islamic murder, bombings, and hate.

What hold do the Arab countries have at the UN, to "agree" with the savages?

Is it oil? Is it because the Muslims want the entire Middle East as Islamic states.

They do not want any other religion in the mist of Islam.

What if it had been a Catholic state? They would have had he same condemnation in the UN.

Time for the civilized world to start to support Israel, and oppose the Arab/Isalmic states

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dm • Apr 20, 2016 at 07:10

Over the last 20 years in India, one was not aware who were Hindu, Christian or Muslim, no one wore a giant cross or hung pictures of gods around their body or covered their heads. All people were simply people. NOW, Muslims men have huge beards, wear Arabic type traditional clothes, the women are covered from head to foot, making their religious presence visible. Mosques are getting larger, prolific and louder by the day.

Women were happy not to cover their bodies from head to foot, it has been created by so-called religious men who are more interested in controlling women to be their slaves than for any religious reasons. Religion is being used as a weapon of control. Not for any high idealistic thought or the protection of women, but solely for use and abuse of personal freedom.

Bahareh Hedayat is a human rights activist who has spent over six years in an Iranian prison for "insulting" Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and for "actions against national security, propagation of falsehoods, mutiny and illegal congregation." Hedayat is the longest serving female prisoner of conscience in Iran.

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